Silvet is a Vamp plugin for note transcription in polyphonic music. http://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/projects/silvetSilvet listens to audio recordings of music and tries to work out what notes are being played. It uses the method described in "A Shift-Invariant Latent Variable Model for Automatic Music Transcription" by Emmanouil Benetos and Simon Dixon (Computer Music Journal, 2012).
The plugin is provided with source code under the GNU General Public License, and with binaries for Windows, OS/X and Linux.
How good is it?Silvet performs well for some recordings, but the range of music that works well is quite limited at this stage. Generally it works best with piano or acoustic instruments in solo or small-ensemble music.
Silvet does not transcribe percussion and has a limited range of instrument support. It does not technically support vocals, although it will sometimes transcribe them anyway.
You can usually expect the output to be reasonably informative and to bear some audible relationship to the actual notes, but you shouldn't expect to get something that can be directly converted to a readable score. For much rock/pop music in particular the results will be, at best, recognisable.
To summarise: try it and see.
